Stef on Jazz

I could not have felt more unqualified to listen to jazz last night when I walked down the sweaty steps to the Jazz Standard, an apparently up-and-coming jazz locale on the New York City scene. I wouldn't know. I was like a playboy bunny at a Star Wars convention.

As I declined the barbeque menu and surveyed the low-lighted room for signs as to who the audience was, I couldn't pinpoint it. Sure, there were sweatpantedly disheveled hipsters whose onyx glasses frames were big enough to share. There were a set of conservative-looking twentysomething bros sharing barbeque and matching blue button-downs, escaping their Lilly Pulitzer wives. (Yes, I was quite disappointed to note rings on these blue-blooded fingers).

When five men took the stage for the headlining duo act, I was confused by my inability to count. Guillermo Klein and Aaron Goldberg were supposedly presenting Bienestan, their new album. Since I'm going to Spain soon, this seemed fittingly convenient. I also attended with two friends dreaming of their own semester in Seville, a 'Bienestan' life of it's own. Soon, I'll be blogging all about that from many miles from here. The Jazz show, like all music, how the power to distract and remove me from the exposed piped ceiling and explore beyond. And it was absolutely explorative.

I think of jazz, I think of call-waiting or elevator music. Imagine that, but on drugs. Guillermo Klein may be a musical composition genius but to me, his egg-shaped head bobbed back and forth and his eyes rolled back into his head like he was about to have a seizure or go into anaphylactic shock. Music is his drug, I've decided. The erratic, 'I do what I want" rhythm and method to his jazz showcased how a duo can write for 7 instruments between 5 people who are each allowed solos and also play well all at once.

I think. I'm still really confused because you just can't review the Top 40 beside last nights melee. Next to piano experimental Jazz with classic and typical saxophone or flute muddled by drums played with what looks and sounds like a egg-wash brush, I can't say I have a solid opinion beyond an entry-level curiousity.

Ultimately, I regretted dropping the viola after 5th grade.  People around me were counting out the beats like human metronomes pulsing everywhere. I was unaware there was a metric to the music for most of the show. I was just listening, not analyzing (until now) because I thought you were just supposed to go and listen and enjoy, like a romantic comedy. Apparently, the arts actually get more complex than that.

I was a bit skeptical of "Bienestan," this fictional escape country that Klein created with his partner to keep worldly influences out of their music, but I think they got me to visit their imagination, perhaps only for fleeting seconds between the disconnected keynotes.

Also, CON: Had to make phone calls in the bathroom. Basement clubs are beyond the modern world, like Bienestan is beyond the places we know I guess. Let's just blame the Verizon strikes.